Inside The Most Successful Silicon Valley Company No One Ever Talks About

Owen Thomas, Business InsiderWhen we sat down with Intuit CEO Brad Smith recently and started talking about the company, he called the top maker of finance software a "30-year-old startup."

Not so fast, we told Smith: "You can't use that line. The last guy called Intuit a '20-year-old startup' 10 years ago."

That in itself speaks to Intuit's longevity, and the constant urge to reinvent itself. Because in Silicon Valley, there are plenty of people eager to do the reinventing for you.

But that last guy—Steve Bennett, a GE veteran who's now CEO of Symantec—was more concerned with having Intuit act like a grown-up company than a startup.

Shortly after he took over in 2007, Smith discovered an innovation gap: Only 4 out of 50 products introduced in the past decade had grown to $50 million or more in revenues. That's changing: In 2012, Intuit got $100 million in revenues from products that didn't even exist three years ago.

The stock has tripled since 2009, and Intuit has made smart acquisitions like Mint, a Web-based personal-finance manager, and PayCycle, an online-payroll service.

More importantly, with in-house resources, it's rolled out enchanting new products like SnapTax, an iPhone and Android app that lets you prepare and file a simple tax return without touching a computer.

Where Bennett was obsessed with "process excellence" and "operational rigor," Smith is rearchitecting Intuit for innovation—including the campus itself.

The company is getting rid of PowerPoint presentations and replacing them with whiteboards filled with customer stories.

It's also adding perks like a full-service gym, sports courts, and cafeterias that make it easier for employees to work long hours.

Eileen Fagan, Intuit's director of innovation, gave us a tour.